Jad Abumrad, co-host of the amazing “Radiolab” just won a McArthur genius grant – a $500,000 prize with almost no limits on how to spend it.

If you’ve never listened to Radiolab, stop reading blogs, go download an episode sit back with a good pair of headphones. It’s beautifully produced, a joy to listen to, and tells great science stories to boot. Many of my stock cocktail-party (or more often bar) stories should come with the disclaimer “I learned this on Radiolab.”

The last episode on “Games,” was fantastic, especially since I listened to it just after doing this year’s fantasy football draft.

My favorites:
– Musical Language (this is the first one I ever heard and it got me hooked).
(Bonus: This “Making of” podcast demonstrates Jad’s Genius – he takes the audio from one of the interviews in which a scientist says “Sound is sort of touch at a distance,” and stretches and compresses it to make the sound of bones rattling and waves undulating to make an auditory illustration of the way sound enters the ear and gets interpreted by the brain)

Just browsing through the archive I realized there are at least 20 others that I heartily recommend, but posting them all would be redundant. Seriously, they’re great. Here’s hoping that this grant means more wonderful programming coming up.